Asmongold pushes back on Dr Disrespect calling NFT critics “brain dead”

Twitch streamer Asmongold has responded to fellow streamer Dr Disrespect’s recent comments on NFTs, claiming valuable in-game items would only lead to more cheating.

On Sunday (March 5), Dr Disrespect claimed that the “entertainment value” created by the supposed value of in-game NFTs would lead to “a new PvP experience” for players.

“Imagine trying to ‘extract’ with an item you discovered worth $100,000 on the chain,” said the streamer, who added: “The concept of digital collectibles in an online game is so exciting to me. Especially an extraction type of game.”

“People saying scam and ‘ugh’ are just brain dead headline followers,” he continued.

Since then, Asmongold (via Dexerto) has pushed back on Dr Disrespect’s claims, suggesting that the “average player” doesn’t want NFTs and that any in-game items with real-world value would lead to more players using cheats.

“Let me counter this: I don’t think that people want to have every aspect of their gaming experience commodified to the extent that everything that they obtain and earn and the fundamental of the game is built around a dollar value,” said the streamer.

“You can roll for a character but you can’t go and be like ‘oh, I’m going to go sell this for more money — I can get invincible, but I can’t sell invincible’. I think that’s a very big difference.”

Asmongold went on to state that items with real monetary value could tempt more players into using cheats.

“If I was playing a game and I knew that I could kill someone and get a $100,000 item, you know what I would do? Cheat. I would cheat,” he explained. “Of course, why wouldn’t you cheat? If you’ve got that much money on the line, you just make a new account. You’re doing it in another country, they can’t arrest you, there’s nothing that [developers] can do. If they ban you, you make a new account and you’re hacking people constantly.”

“This is just not going to work,” he continued. “I also think it can be antithetical to a lot of people’s motivation to get into video gaming in general on the fundamental aspect that it takes the escapism away and turns your activity into a dollar value.”

Deadrop, an upcoming extraction shooter from Midnight Society – a studio Dr Disrespect co-founded – will feature in-game NFTs. Touching on that, Asmongold said: “It’s interesting to try new ideas but I don’t think it will work as well as [Dr Disrespect] thinks it will.”

Earlier in the year, a Game Developers Conference survey revealed that 70 per cent of studios had no interest in NFTs.

In other gaming news, London Games Festival has announced its Official Selection for this month’s event.